UK high streets are a shadow of their former selves, as online shopping squeezes what financial analysts have labelled “traditional bricks and mortar retail outlets”.
The pandemic shut more stores and the cost-of-living crisis has shuttered even more. Stagnating wages and Tory tax hikes only made it worse.
Then Labour blundered in.
Shoppers lost their nerve when faced with chancellor Rachel Reeves’ terrifying talk of black holes and Budget tax raids.
The economy shrank in September and October. In November, retail sales collapsed by 3.3%, as the British Retail Consortium (BRC) bemoaned a “bad start to festive season”.
December is looking pretty dismal too, judging by the growing number Sales notices being slapped up in a host of shopfronts.
The ones that haven’t been boarded up, that is.
I’ve visited a few high streets in recent months and they break my heart. Too many are bleak, scruffy, windswept and abandoned.
Greggs is holding the fort, and a few other chains, but they’re surrounded a mass of vaping shops, bookies and those weird American sweet shops that seem to be a front for something even more dubious.
A roll call of household names have gone into administration. Woolworths, Comet, BHS, Wilko, Peacock, Jaeger, Carpetright, The Body Shop, Ted Baker, Debenhams, Burton, Dorothy Perkins, Wallis, Victoria’s Secret, Oak Furnitureland, Monsoon, Beales, Aldo, Laura Ashley, Cath Kidston, Joules… need I go on?
Some have been bought out and reopened in few numbers, while other brands live a half-life online. It’s not the same. This is carnage.
Our high streets are starting to resemble the Soviet union, AFTER the neutron bomb has dropped.
I guess it’s good news for bargain hunters, with Liberty, Sweaty Betty, Hobbs and even Harrods launching Boxing Day sales two weeks early.
Thinks look bad today. Next year will be worse.
Labour’s Budget is the final nail in our high street. Rachel Reeves’ decision to slap £25billion of extra national insurance charges on employers will bury it.
That will cost shops sector a staggering £7 billion when it comes into force in April, according to the BRC.
Hiking the minimum wage by an inflationbusting 6.7% at the same time will only make things worse.
Retailers might might have been able to absorb the cost if the UK was booming, but we’re not.
Labour is literally taxing businesses to death.
As we slide towards needless recession, tax revenues are likely to more likely to fall than rise. Which means Reeves will come back for more tax, accelerating the vicious cycle.
That’s not the only way Labour is killing shops. Energy secretary Ed Miliband’s green transition lunacy will drive energy bills higher, further squeezing margins.
If your high street is still functioning, make the most of it. Next Christmas could be even tougher than this one.
